[Mighty To Save, Hillsong United]
UPDATE: I edited... well, mostly just added content to... this post here in the wee hours of the morning (2:16 am... blame it on those inspirational Olympics :) Nastia Liukin made me cry. But if you read this yesterday I suggest a re-read!
What an emotional day.
First, I went to lunch with a good friend who was really supportive to me in our old church. Unfortunately she was the best friend of some relatives who have since cut Jason and I out of their lives (as in, told us we were dead to them because we left "their" church). We thought that it was just an issue with us, but I learned that basically anyone who doesn't agree with their pastor is cut out of their lives, this friend included. The good thing is that I can have a relationship with her again; I didn't have contact because I didn't want the relatives to think I was trying to hurt them by being friends with their crowd.
Things were way worse at our old church than we ever knew, and we're just grateful that we were discerning enough and given wisdom through Jesus to get out when we did. Said pastor (the same one who basically congratulated us on having sex before marriage, even though we were seeking help from him as our spiritual leader to stop doing so) is caught up in a horrible power trip and has done just about everything a person who loves Jesus shouldn't; the worst part is that the elders of the church refuse to fire him and he has chosen our relatives as his right hand people, and they're so heady with the power and status that they don't even realize their lives are based on a false Jesus.
Their children, whom Jason and I miss so much, are paying the price and it's a disastrous situation.
Their children, whom Jason and I miss so much, are paying the price and it's a disastrous situation.
My heart is quite literally sick, and my husband is now considering a letter to the family writ large that basically says the F family, despite their claims to the contrary, isn't living for Jesus and as Christians we apologize for the way His name is being desecrated by them. Trust me, this is heavy heavy stuff and all it does is distract from Jesus and the fact that He is good, holy, pure, and desires relationship with people... it makes me angry that people who desperately need Him are being led further away from Him by "Christians" who cause nothing but problems and then slap His name on it!
The good news is, despite all of this emotional stuff, I didn't eat emotionally. We ate at an amazing seafood place on the (Puget) Sound in Ballard (my favorite Seattle neighborhood) called Ray's Cafe. I'm actually proud to report that I did allow myself a treat- a small cup of (AMAZING) clam chowder and two bread rolls. But then instead of the salmon burger and battered fries, which I really wanted, I had a seafood salad with smoked scallops, smoked salmon, and fresh shrimp. It was really small (healthy) portions of the seafood, and none of it was cooked in butter, so it was fabulously healthy and so delicious :) I ate slowly and savored the food and felt that wonderful contentedness afterward- where you're satiated, no longer hungry, but not overly full. It was lovely :) The best part of the meal, other than the company, was the view--
I was sitting basically where the guy in the blue (gray?) shirt is-- isn't that view AMAZING? How I love and adore Seattle :)
Moving on... more emotional stuffs...
The next big issue... the dreaded baby-wanting syndrome. I have many friends with babies, and each time I have found out someone is pregnant I have been so happy for them, overjoyed for them, and not the least bit envious. Then, without warning, things started to shift.
The first tiny ping hit when some friends found out they're having twins. I have ALWAYS wanted twins, and the chances are almost zilch because there is like one set a few generations back on Jas' side and I'm not sure of any on my side. I know that if Jesus wants me to have twins then I will, but when A found out she was having them I was thrilled for her but also felt that ping of sadness that I may never have them. Understand this- I am happy for her. I don't want her to not have them, by any means- I just wish I could have the same thing. It's still coveting even if it's not with malintent toward her.
(Apparently Google thinks malintent isn't a word. Google needs to catch up with urbania... ok, so I made that one up. Still... malicious + intentions = malintent. HELLO.)
Then, another friend just found out last weekend that she is pregnant. There were four of us who were super close in college, and when the first one (you know I love you, Rachface) was preggers there was only happiness. I even knew that SF would start "trying" probably this summer, and was only happy for her. But then when SH said she was pregnant, out of nowhere I felt this overwhelming sadness-- notice the jump from tiny ping to overwhelming here. Not sadness for her- I am sure she will be a wonderful mother and her baby will be raised to love Jesus and I'm truly happy for her- but I feel an emptiness for not being a mother yet.
On the one hand, my head knows we're completely not ready. Financially we have loads of student loan debt, a really junky car (I would not want to cart around a baby in the Ghettro-- no way, no thank you.), currently no maternity insurance, and really no finances to spend on all of the stuff a baby needs (even with the vast resource for hand-me-downs that is Mars Hill Church we'd still have lots to buy). Maturity wise we're still babies in marriage, and have always agreed that we wanted to wait at least one year, upwards of three or four, before trying to get pregnant; we don't fight nearly as much as the first two months, but we still want our marriage to be rock solid and firmly footed on Jesus, with a lot of growth in how to effectively communicate, before bringing a baby into the equation. Spiritually we're going through so much and just growing and really need to let Jesus root out more sin before we're ready.
And... most concerning, really... physically I am simply too fat. Even if I got pregnant the chances of miscarriage are astronomically higher for my size, plus my mom had one (that shoots up your chances) and genetically I have much higher estrogen levels than normal (plus, body fat produces estrogen and I have about 2oo pounds of it, so... yeah.) and estrogen surges lead to infertility and higher miscarriage rates. I would be so upset with myself if my baby had to die because I can't stop eating like a pig. That's just wrong.
My head knows all of this... but my heart, oh my heart. It longs to feel that wonder of knowing a little human is growing inside of me, to know that it's a product of all of the love my husband and I share. The desire to see a little person who is the combination of the two of us, to hold him and pour all of that love for each other and for Jesus into our baby, is palpable. Impassioned curiosity longs to see a child grow up, discovering daily which physical and character traits will take after Jas and I (hopefully our best ones!) and which ones will clearly be from Jesus because they're totally not related to us. I yearn for that intimacy with my child, in the quiet, the connectedness of mother to offspring with all of the love that I didn't even know I could have for another person springing forth for her. I ache to take all that I am learning about raising a child to love Jesus, to shepherd his heart, to live out a life of love for Jesus that she can emulate.
It's so strong... maybe it's just that I started my period yesterday and it's a reminder that I'm not pregnant and the hormones are socking it to me. I don't know. I know that I have to continually give it to Jesus and ask Him for peace for His timing. The scary thing is that Jason and I did have sex before marriage because we were prideful and religious and thought we had it together spiritually. We started off by completely crossing the line on the phone, and then in person, and we thought we were ok because we never "went all the way", as if that's all God really cares about (in case you missed the memo, it's not. He wants purity.). But, oh how I wanted to finally experience sex. And every time things got hot and heavy physically I pushed the boundaries, sinfully enticing Jas to go farther and farther. After so many times of pulling back he sinfully followed me and let me make the calls, instead of putting on the brakes and leading us to Jesus, and together we walked (sexed?) right into much deeper sin. I say this because I remember hoping hoping hoping when we were getting physical that he'd give in and go all the way.
It's scary because I have found myself a few times, now, when we're about to have sex (the Biblical way- within the bounds of a marriage relationship between a man and a woman seeking to love Jesus) hoping he'll forget the condom (our preferred method of birth control) or get too impassioned to care and I'll stay silent, and I always feel a little pouty when he pauses to reach over for that despicable latex, the Trojan symbol mocking me and reminding me that I don't get to be pregnant. I know that I'll get pregnant in Jesus' timing, condoms or no, but that for now we're to be responsible and use the preventative measures. Still... my head and my heart can't seem to get on the same page.
Stupid stuff that normally wouldn't matter gets to me. For example, I said I have a group of four friends from college, all of us super close to one another. Relationships have shifted and settled and for a long time (as in years, now) I've had such peace about just letting them shift and settle as they may. I haven't envied others being closer to one another than to me, and I haven't felt threatened if I sensed exclusion (which was TOTALLY my problem in college... one instance, in particular, all but shattered my chance to be friends with any of them... to be fair, I was excluded and it wasn't right but my reaction was equally, if not more, wrong) in seriously like three, maybe even four or five... I've lost count, years.
So then, while checking in on Facebook, I noticed that one friend made what probably seemed like an innocent comment- the newly pregnant one told the one with a baby that they just needed to get friend #3 (the one who was going to start trying to get pregnant this summer) on board so they all could be pregnant together. Now, maybe she intentionally didn't mention me because she knows I am not looking to get pregnant for a few years and she knows that friend #3 is. That's almost certainly why, in fact. Yet my pathetic heart immediately felt like a rusty, broken sword was being plunged in and out, in and out. My head knew it wasn't meant to be personal or hurt me, but my heart... my heart. My heart told me I was being excluded and left out because they all love each other more than they love me and I'm simply not valuable enough to include mention in the "let's all be pregnant together" ideal. As if they consider themselves a close group of three friends, and I am sort of the leftovers, the one they don't have the heart to tell they don't think of as one of them.
I know how pathetic and emotional and lame I must sound. I wish I could be perfectly well-adjusted and cool. Sometimes I hate that I am this way, that I am such a mess. I start to wonder if maybe everyone else is just rock solid and together and they all want nothing to do with me because I'm too sticky and messy and they'd rather love people who are clean and "safe".
There was a horrible undercurrent of thought in my college church that said that many people aren't safe because they're needy and you should basically cut them out of your life. I have thought about this a lot. I think it's true, to an extent. My biological father sexually abused me, was and is unrepentant some 20 years later (my brother point blank asked him about a year ago why he sexually abused us, and he looked my brother in the eye and said he never did, that our mom just created lies... my first memories of existence, of him molesting and raping me, are to quite the contrary), and though I forgive him I will not ever pursue relationship with him unless he repents.
That, I think, is the litmus test for a safe person- if a person is confronted about their sin yet remains unrepentant with no qualms about the harm they're causing (like, for example, the relatives mentioned at the beginning of the post) then you have to forgive them (if you're in Jesus) and there comes a point where you have to draw a line in the sand, set boundaries, and sometimes even cut off all ties. If they repent then you can have reconciliation, but without repentance you simply cannot risk your (or your family's) relationship with Jesus for a human in unrepentant sin. You just can't.
I remember feeling like I was always that unsafe person- I still plan to eventually blog about it, but there were thoughts about who and how I was that were untrue, and I was considered a danger to a certain subset of the church, sadly the same subset I felt God leading me to serve and minister to. I felt dirty and thought that maybe all of the horrible things assumed about me were true, hiding deep in me, and that they'd eventually come out. If your pastor thinks you are a dangerously unsafe person, at least in my case, you start to believe they have insight into who you really are that even you don't have about yourself. So I must be "unsafe", a danger, needing to be constantly reigned in and untrusted. In retrospect, my definition of unsafe wasn't that I was unrepentant, because I believe Jesus' greatest gift to me when He formed me in my mother's womb is that when I am confronted I am always quick to own up to my sin and repent. My heart is very soft. That said, back then I thought unsafe was more akin to high-maintenance, messy, and prone to fail to live up to the standards being set for me by what I now can realize was a legalistic church lacking in grace and love.
I always felt like, in my relationships, I was messy and no one wanted to risk being close to me so they all preferred each other. Really, I think this was a defense mechanism to keep people at a distance so I didn't have to truly trust them. I was constantly caught between thinking I was awesome, expecting everyone to think me amazing as well, on one end of the pendulum to thinking everyone hated me and tolerated me just to be nice on the other end.
I know now I can stand on the truth that I am a sinner- of which no one is aware more than myself, second only to the Holy Trinity- but that I am generally repentant and my deepest desire is to know and love Jesus. Yes, I am messy. I suspect that everyone is as messy and just hides it better, and if the options are between being as screwed up as I am or as fake as most others then I'm quite happy being the openly messed up person I happen to be.
I know most of my emotions tonight are temporary, and in a week (or an hour) I'll kick myself for being so honest here in this post, because my desired facade of being so "together" is once again completely betrayed, but I'm really ok with that.
I think most Christians fall into one of two categories. First are the Paul's- the impassioned people who meet Jesus, immediately change, and seem to only have "Holy" problems like being too boldly passionate for Jesus. How I have longed to be a Paul, so strong, so solid, so easily emulatable (so I made that word up, but you get it).
Then, there are the Peter's. Ah, Peter. He impetuously made promises to cleave to Christ that without the Holy Spirit he couldn't keep and then fearfully denied Christ to a teenage girl. What a real "rock", right? (How sad that the papacy gets it so wrong- I honestly believe that Jesus was being sarcastic when He called Peter the Rock, joking with him, not saying build my entire church on this one person...) Even once he had the Holy Spirit we find Peter being rebuked as a hypocrite by Paul, of all people- Peter an apostle who walked and talked with Jesus and Paul the self-proclaimed least of all the apostles for being chosen after the ascension- still messing up by hanging out with the sinfully led Judaizers (Galatians 2).
The point is, both Paul and Peter loved Jesus, were led by Jesus, and lived for Jesus. Both were sinners. Paul is just so solid- clean, safe. Peter was often shaky (again, not so much the rock!)- messy, risky. I've always wished I was a Paul. My dear friend in college, Sharon, is the epitome of a Paul. She has her issues but she's just so solid and clean and easy to love. I'm her polar opposite. I'm messy and hard to love, incessantly grappling openly with sin that seems to prove that I'll always be a mess.
But really... I think that's ok. Paul had a powerful ministry, and he's the one with half the new testament under his pen. He was faithful with what Jesus gave him. But so was Peter, and I am confident that people could relate to Peter who maybe didn't get Paul, and vice versa. Be it less glamorous, my place in this world is not to be a Paul, but rather to embrace Jesus and reach those who relate to Peter. I simply am not and will never be a Paul.
I love the Paul's out there. I do. And I know Jesus loves the each type as they are for who they are because they are in Him. Kudos to the Paul's.
But this one... well, this one's for the Peter's. I get you, and I'm quite certain you get me.
This entry was posted
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at Thursday, August 14, 2008
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